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Dealing With Haters
I am a huge Disney fan (I know, gasp) and most of my friends are not. Most of them are tolerant to my love of the mouse, but not always. A number of them will trollishly make fun of the movies in order to gets riled up, but I usually take it in stride. Sometimes, though, some of them make comments that have no level of sarcasm or no level of chiding humour to them.
For example, we were watching Immortals, and I couldn't remember the name of the actor who narrated the film. It was John Hurt, who I know as being Sutler from V for Vendetta and the Horned King from the Disney adaptation of the Black Cauldron. My friend mentioned Sutler and I replied saying that he was the Horned King. His response was to say "isn't that from that shitty Disney movie? No one fucking cares!"
Needless to say (otherwise I would not be starting this discussion), I was kind of hurt. I understand that not everyone likes Disney, but if it's some offhand remark, that level of anger or snippiness is not called for at all. Normally I would just say haters gonna hate, but when it's one of your friends, it hits at a different level. Do any of you have any advice as to how to deal with stuff like this or have any similar stories?
For example, we were watching Immortals, and I couldn't remember the name of the actor who narrated the film. It was John Hurt, who I know as being Sutler from V for Vendetta and the Horned King from the Disney adaptation of the Black Cauldron. My friend mentioned Sutler and I replied saying that he was the Horned King. His response was to say "isn't that from that shitty Disney movie? No one fucking cares!"
Needless to say (otherwise I would not be starting this discussion), I was kind of hurt. I understand that not everyone likes Disney, but if it's some offhand remark, that level of anger or snippiness is not called for at all. Normally I would just say haters gonna hate, but when it's one of your friends, it hits at a different level. Do any of you have any advice as to how to deal with stuff like this or have any similar stories?
Post edited by Li_Akahi on
Comments
don't give a shit about them, don't hang out with them if its gonna be an issue. If nothing else inform them their comments are hurtful and disrespectful to your personal preferences. If they're really your friends they'll respect your opinions. Those who matter won't care, and those who care don't matter.
There's a reason I'm overall pretty quiet about my interests and opinions that don't line up with everyone else unless I'm around just you. I've noticed you do a similar thing in some ways, in that you seem a lot more comfortable and sincere around your friends back home, which is part of why I like them so much.
1) Try to figure out why you are offended.
2) Try to figure out why "thing" was said.
3) If you don't know why thing was said, ask.
4)
Sadly the complex dispute resolution algorithm is unsolved and I can only attempt a partial solution.
But really, Ryan. Just because you have one group of friends you've had for awhile doesn't mean you have to exclusively stick by them and only branch out in the same ways that the group does. It's okay to hang out with people who aren't in the same group at all sometimes. I know for a fact Casey adores you, she'd do with having your company more often.
To add on: You deserve friends that are interested in you, for who you are and what you're interested in. It's not an issue of "good" people or "bad" people, but sometimes they just don't fulfill your needs and you have to know that's okay... if you have friends you can rely on that DO fulfill those needs. I know you want to cling to this idea of a great family-like established group, but you're a great guy with a lot to offer so it's not necessarily about "dealing", you're allowed to have lots of diverse friends.
I think that an extremely large part of our population has this problem. We are people, we discuss things, and we criticize things. Companies try very hard to make themselves a part of our self image. "I'm a Ford/Coke kinda guy." No two people like exactly the same things. Every human on Earth is a hater compared to everyone else on Earth when it comes to one thing or another. If a thing is part of your self, and you convert criticism of a thing into criticism of yourself, then you can see how it is going to be very problematic.
It is well known I don't like the Star Trek, Firefly, Archer, and many other things other nerds like. Most of my friends like those things very much. If I say to one of them, Star Trek sucks, do they get upset? They disagree, but it's not a personal attack against them. It's an attack against a corny old TV show. They might have a nerdy debate, or some back and forth smack talk, but nobody is going to feel bad about it.
Some people make the following faulty leap in logic:
I like that thing.
That person hates that thing, and they think it is stupid.
That person hates me, and thinks I am stupid for liking that thing they hate.
If you fall into this kind of thinking, you just can't live with people. As I said before, everyone is a hater. You will think every human on Earth hates you because every human being on earth does not like at least one thing that you like.
Now, if you make a thing, and someone hates it, then you might be able to take legitimate offense at that. If someone says a thing that you made sucks, they might be insulting your skills and you directly. But even then, if you are making things, and are unprepared to accept legitimate or illegitimate criticism, then you had better stop making things. Any creation of any kind is itself a criticism and an invitation for criticism.
There is one other possible scenario. There is a thing you have invested time and/or money and/or emotion into. Someone makes fun of the thing. You realize that they are right. You can't defend the thing in an argument, because it does actually suck. You don't want to accept it because that would mean regretting the time and/or money you have wasted. You aren't personally insulted because someone is making fun of you, you are just not handling the truth.
The right thing to do in these situations is to accept the truth, but not have the regret. I've wasted a lot of time and money on a lot of stupid shit. Middle school Scott loves Magic: The Gathering more than anything. Current Scott knows it's Money: The Wasting. But do I regret wasting that money? Hell no. I would not go back in time and spend that money any differently, assuming I can't buy winning lottery tickets.
Can I be great friends with someone who still loves M:TG, and even insult the game right to their face? Of course! We live on the Internet. That is what we do every second of every day. If that kind of shit upset us, we would have cried ourselves to death by cause of Internet over a decade ago.
Things are in no way sacred. People as a whole need to stop caring what other people say about things. As long as people treat other people well, I don't give a fraction of a fuck how people treat objects. Like the IKEA Lamp commercial. You are stupid, it is a lamp! It does not have feelings, and the new one is much better!
Way to make me wonder why we hang out with you :-p
'Nuff said.
There's a pretty well-defined boundary between a piss-take and disrespect, and whoever this person is crossed it.
That said; Disney-related or not, they can be pretty shitty to Ryan.
I dunno, maybe I'm just lucky enough to have a friend group that never seriously insults me. I don't really allow people to actively insult me and I draw a very clear line between tolerable ragging and fighting words which most of my friends are well aware of; that could play into how I'm interpreting this. That said, I feel like what you are describing isn't normal. There's always something dramatic happening with some of my friends, it seems, but we don't perpetuate an atmosphere of lies, deception, and talking behind each other's backs under the guise of "the benefit of the doubt." We also apologize if we accidentally say something hurtful, or if we have a fight, and we believe each other. I feel like honesty, trust, and respect is the basis of a healthy friendship, and if they've said worse to you than they did to Ryan, you shouldn't let that slide.
If you can't trust your friends and they don't trust or respect you, then your social web is really, really toxic, and you need to consider how you're going to fix it. That might mean you stop hanging out with people, but is that really such a loss if they treat you like absolute shit in the first place?
I could be alone on this one, but I'm sure someone will back me up. I feel like Nuri did a whole panel on this once, but I'm not sure.
You get periodically upset about this. It's not happening just when you notice it that it goes on, and I truly do feel like you deserve more respect. Not least of all, from yourself.
For example, my brother despises the podcasts I listen to. He believes that it's a complete waste of time to listen to "Geeks bitching about bullshit." And if you don't like podcasting, that's one thing. However, he has tried to dissertate me to not listen to any more podcasts, just lambasting how they are worthless forms of entertainment and I shouldn't listen to them when I have nothing else to do.
Even once, when my wireless earphones were playing an audio review. I was curious when something was coming from, and when I found out it was my bluetooth connected headphones, I started to turn them off. And this was in the time frame of 5 seconds. Once he heard something, he went. "Man, are you really going to listen to that shit now?"
Being a hater is all about persistence, severity and how UNWILLING you are to accept something.